Books We Can't Wait to Read: April 2023
Spring is here and so is a new crop of fiction and nonfiction books we can’t wait to read this April.
Fiction
Blue Hour by Tiffany Clarke Harrison— April 4 (Soft Skull)
Our narrator is a gifted photographer, an uncertain wife, an infertile mother, a biracial woman in an unraveling America. As she grapples with a lifetime of ambivalence about motherhood, yet another act of police brutality makes headlines, and this time the victim is Noah, a boy in her photography class.
Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld — April 4 (Random House)
A comedy writer thinks she's sworn off love, until a dreamy pop star flips the script on all her assumptions--a hilarious, observant, and deeply tender novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Eligible, Rodham, and Prep.
Cursed Bread by Sophie Mackintosh— April 4 (Doubleday Books)
From the Booker Prize-nominated author of The Water Cure comes an elegant and hypnotic new novel of obsession that centers on the real unsolved mystery of the 1951 mass poisoning of a French village.
Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad— April 4 (Grove Press)
A bold, evocative new novel from the Sue Kaufman, Betty Trask and Plimpton Prize Award winner Isabella Hammad that follows actress Sonia as she returns to Palestine and takes a role in a West Bank production of Hamlet.
The People Who Report More Stress: Stories by Alejandro Varela — April 4 (Astra House)
The People Who Report More Stress is a collection of interconnected stories brimming with the anxieties of people who retreat into themselves while living in the margins, acutely aware of the stresses that modern life takes upon the body and the body politic.
Chrysalis by Anna Metcalfe— April 11 (Random House)
Uncanny, alluring, and intimate, Chrysalis raises vital questions about selfhood and solitude. This daring novel asks if it is possible for a woman to have agency over her body while remaining part of society, and then offers its own explosive answer.
The Last Animal by Ramona Ausubel — April 18 (Riverhead Books)
The Last Animal takes readers on a wild, entertaining, and refreshingly different kind of journey, one that explores the possibilities and perils of the human imagination on a changing planet, what it's like to be a woman in a field dominated by men, and how a wondrous discovery can best be enjoyed with family. Even teenagers.
The Weeds by Katy Simpson Smith— April 18 (FSG)
Lush, intoxicating, and teeming with mischief, Katy Simpson Smith's The Weeds is a tense, mesmerizing page-turner about science and survival, the roles women are given and have taken from them, and the lives they make for themselves.
Games and Rituals: Stories by Katherine Heiny — April 18 (Knopf)
The beloved author of Early Morning Riser brings us glittering stories of love--friendships formed at the airport bar, ex-husbands with benefits, mothers of suspiciously sweet teenagers, ill-advised trysts--in all its forms, both ridiculous and sublime.
The Haunting of Alejandra by V. Castro — April 18 (Del Rey Books)
A woman is haunted by the Mexican folk demon La Llorona in this ravishing and provocative literary horror novel about motherhood, family legacy, and self-discovery.
The Butter House by Sarah Gerard — April 18 (Conium Press)
Sarah Gerard's The Butter House follows a woman who moves from a New York apartment to a Florida bungalow with her boyfriend. As she adapts to her new surroundings, the narrator navigates contradictory landscapes of love and possession, nature and built-environment, empathy and sympathy. She undergoes the arduous task of introducing two cats to the house and each other, while also becoming a surrogate caretaker for the neighborhood's feral cat colony. She grows a garden. She interrogates what it means to care for someone or something. Laced within these tender scenes, The Butter House chooses deliberate moments to scratch and bite with the ferocity of a territorial alley cat.
The Skin and Its Girl by Sarah Cypher — April 25 (Ballantine Books)
A young, queer Palestinian American woman pieces together her great-aunt's secrets in this sweeping debut, confronting questions of sexual identity, exile, and lineage.
Nonfiction
A Living Remedy by Nicole Chung — April 4 (Ecco Books)
Exploring the enduring strength of family bonds in the face of hardship and tragedy, A Living Remedy examines what it takes to reconcile the distance between one life, one home, and another - and sheds needed light on some of the most persistent and grievous inequalities in American society.
Anything That Moves by Jamie Stewart— April 4 (And Other Stories)
From being caught having their first orgasm by their mom's
best friend to being stalked and propositioned by a fundamentalist pastor; from soliciting spanking dates over the Internet to scoring a coveted invitation to a threesome with some elf fetishist neighbors, indie music darling (Xiu Xiu) Jamie Stewart's journey of fleshy self-discovery and queer awakening makes for an extraordinary, cringy, unputdownable epic in miniature, burning always with radical and often shocking
self-criticism.
The Language of Trees: A Rewilding of Literature and Landscape by Katie Holten— April 4 (Tin House Books)
The Language of Trees considers our relationship with literature and landscape, resulting in an astonishing fusion of storytelling and art and a deeply beautiful celebration of trees through the ages.
You Could Make This Place Beautiful: A Memoir by Maggie Smith — April 11 (Atria/One Signal Publishers)
You Could Make This Place Beautiful, like the work of Deborah Levy, Rachel Cusk, and Gina Frangello, is an unflinching look at what it means to live and write our own lives. It is a story about a mother's fierce and constant love for her children, and a woman's love and regard for herself. Above all, this memoir is an argument for possibility. With a poet's attention to language and an innovative approach to the genre, Smith reveals how, in the aftermath of loss, we can discover our power and make something new. Something beautiful.
